It's not a theory. The US is a major trading partner of many countries. The US is a huge consumer of oil. If the US economy is depressed, they can't buy as much stuff from other people, and that hurts business.
This is theoretically true. This is generally not implemented in C++ compilers, though, because C++'s loose semantics for pointers makes such optimizations very difficult to do.
Well, there are also other benefits. For example, the generic data structures in the kernel are based on the void* model. This is quite a bit less efficient than the template model, which allows a lot better code optimization. That's why STL's sort() is usually 10x faster than C's qsort().
I don't quite see how the second statement follows from the first. The reaction of the people to official policy is a natural part of the politics of a country.
If you really understand how interconnected the world has become, you wouldn't have that attitude.
The US is an economic powerhouse, one that is tied with trillions of dollars of international trade and debt. What's bad for the US economy is bad for the world economy. If the US debt keeps going up, and the US has problems paying it, a whole lot of foreigners are out of a lot of money. If the US imposes tariffs on trade, it's not just American workers who suffer, but workers in countries that trade with the US suffer.
So from the point of view of a foreigner, it makes perfect sense to keep abreast of American politics. This is something many people due, because it has a direct impact on their lives. Even as an American, I make it a point to keep abreast of politics in Europe and Canada. These regions are important strategic allies, and important partners in trade. In the future, the EU also looks like it will become an important competitor economically. As a result, I would be foolish not to keep informed of their politics, because they have a direct impact on my country's economy.
The thing is, most people already have a PS2 or GC. Will they buy an XBox just to play the same games more smoothly? Unlikely, and I think XBox's sales numbers reflect that.
Well, I'm not much of a gamer, but PC games really don't appeal to me. I like Counterstrike, Starcraft, and Call of Duty, but that's about it. I think my main beef is how bad PC RPGs suck. My computer is certainly fast enough to run most games, it just get's used for compiling instead:)
I'm completely serious. When I was there, people were as nice as could be, even though I was quite obviously American. And those signs on the highway (nice big official ones), were quite definitely real. Among the people I met, I didn't sense any animosity towards Americans in the way I sense animosity towards the French over here.
I don't own one of those t-shirts. I can't find anything with a collar that says that:) Sersiouly, though, I was totally surprised by the reaction. While the US was doing the whole "freedom fries" crap, the French had signs up on their highways declaring their friendship with the US.
Or, it could just be that the XBox's gaming library is heavily biased towards American tastes? I'm an American, and I don't find the XBox's gaming library to be very attractive --- I hate PC games.
Re:XBox less than 200 units? Is that really accura
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DS Preorders Outsell PS2
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Um, the Japanese love Americans*. The poor sales of the XBox have nothing to do with the Japanese hating Americans. The biggest problem with with the XBox is two-fold:
1) It was late to the scene, and the PS2 was *very* well established by that time;
2) It's gaming library isn't really what the Japanese like. XBox games are more like PC games and less like console games. It's heavy on sports titles, and light on console style RPGs and platformers.
*) So do people in most other countries, which Americans would realize if they actually traveled abroad. Even in Paris, people couldn't have been nicer as I tried to communicate in my heavily yankee-accented broken French:)
The problem is that I'm a libertarian-leaning liberal. That means I've got enough values in common with real conservatives that I can sympathize with them for being pained by Bush's mockery of conservatism.
Well, it's not quite so simple. The president, given his stature, has quite a lot of power to push bills through Congress. He can certainly do something like encourage Congress to take up review of particular legislation. This is nothing new --- it's been the case since FDR in the 1930's.
Bush than Kerry (or at least right-wing ideals vs. left-wing ideals)
Don't conflate Bush with right-wing ideals. The only thing Bush shares with the right is social and religious beliefs. He's clearly not a fiscally responsible, he's in favor of interventionist war and nation-building, one of his first actions was to jack up the steel tariff, etc. Just being in favor of tax cuts doesn't make you an actual conservative.
What authority does he have to do that? It's not like he's going to send troops into Russia without Putin's permission. Russia needs help securing it's nuclear weapons, and it's in the best interests of both Russia and the United States to cooperate in this regard. Remember, the Russians are quite frightened about terrorism too, given the recent events with Chechnya. It's a cooperative venture that's long overdue, and very important.
He talks about how we don't have our allies for the war, when in reality, we do have allies, althoguh we are missing some nations He's right. We don't have *our* allies. We have some allies, but they're not *our* allies. Our allies are the NATO countries, not semi-dictatorships like Pakistan. Our "alliance" is stupid from a military standpoint alone. Why spend billions of dollars to ally yourselves with countries that cannot field the manpower of a single US state? At *best*, it's a strategic mistake, and at worst it's a misleading PR stunt.
I know I wouldnt be all to happy to help Kerry if I was a US ally and he kept saying I did not exist. You probably wouldn't be happy to be an ally, like the Prime Minister of Poland, who now thinks Bush mislead us into the war.
Kerry talks about creating laws as president, although in reality this is his job as a senator Kerry nevers talks about creating laws. I don't know where you got that idea. He *does* talk about pushing through legislation, which is perfectly within his powers as president. The President has a lot of influence to encourage (or discourage) certain legislation in Congress. He also talks a lot about allocation of government spending, which is also in his power, given that the OMB (part of the Whitehouse) drafts the budget.
and he STICKS with the decision that he makes. Sticking with bad decisions is a sign of weakness, not a sign of strength. The information about Iraq has changed drastically since we went in. Bush thought Iraq had WMD, they didn't. Bush thought they were cooperating with terrorists, they weren't. Iraq, as far as two-bit dictatorships go, was less of an immediate danger to us than any of a number of countries. The only excuse Bush has left is that "we freed the people of Iraq." Well, guess what? That's not our job! The only reason Bush still says he wouldn't have done anything different is because he isn't man enough to admit he was wrong.
"While you may not agree with Bush's decision, but you must agree that he has the ability to make a decision" Yes, I agree that Bush has the ability to make decisions. Of course, so does everyone else. That's nothing special. It takes a real man to know when to change his mind. To quote Santayana: "a fanatic is one who, having lost sight of his aim, redoubles his effort". The world is complicated --- you get no credit for trying hard!
Well, it depends quite heavily on the application in question. In practice, most applications do not show a huge difference in performance between 512KB caches and 1MB caches. Certainly, it's nothing like the 50%+ performance improvement that you can get from properly written code on dual core CPUs.
When I speak of freedom, I speak of freedom to not be ruled by will and might of others above my own. Well, you certainly don't live in that sort of society now! Because the will of others tells you that you can't smoke marijuana. The will of others tells you that you can't marry somebody of the same sex. Depending on where you live, the will of others even tells you that you cannot look at pornography. So if that's the definition of freedom you want to use, then I have to say it is something thus far unattained by man.
This is freedom in it's purest for as long as the are in the bounds of the laws formed in a democrocy, NOT by a dictator. This makes no sense. Restricting freedom is okay, as long as a democracy does it, rather than a dictator? Well, we certainly don't have a democracy in the US (we have a republic!), so where do you draw the line? If a dictator is unacceptable, then is a triumvirate okay? How about a committee. How about a parliament? What's the difference? Again, you are conflating democracy and freedom, and that's leading your logic astray.
And no one votes for an evil dictator. Define "evil". Was Hitler evil? Well, lot's of people supported him too (he did great things for Germany before he went wacko). Was Cromwell evil? He certainly was a dictator, but many people loved him! Where do you draw the line for "evil"? Was Napoleon evil? He was a military dictator, and he certainly conquered more of his neighbors than Saddam did! Yet, he remains to this day a popular figure in France. Now, consider that recent polls show that 44% of Iraqi's want Saddam back. You probably consider Saddam evil (and rightly so), but lot's of people did indeed support him. Now, if you expand the definition of "dictator" slightly, consider the theocracy in Iran. It has many of the characteristics of a dictatorship, but it was put in place by a revolution of the people! So your logic is wrong --- people do vote for dictatorships, in various forms, and have throughout history.
As for Kim, you do know that you cannot say anything negitive about him right? If you do, both you and your family are jailed and even killed if your so lucky (less painful) though guilt by association. What's your point? That Kim Jong Il is evil? Well no shit, Sherlock. Sure he's evil. There are evil people like him all over the world. They are a dime a dozen. Is it now our job to rid the world of every single one of them? Do you realize how idealistic and simple you sound?
To bad the UN is a worthless pile of shit do anything about it. The UN isn't designed to do anything about it. Americans have the most warped view of the UN, as if it's some sort of world police. The UN is a meeting place for nations to discuss issues and make plans. It's not there to make fiats that they enforce by military force. It's not a world government, nor should it be a world government.
Hell, for that matter, I say we take out all the worlds dictators that go against the will of the majority of people in a harmful and melevolent manor. First, dictatorship is not necesarily contrary to the will of the people. If you can't understand this simple fact, then you're not paying attention. Second, you wanna foot that bill? Because I'm sure as hell not paying for your idealistic little war on evil. It's a fool's errand to think you can end evil --- it's a war you cannot win. As a free society, all we can do is live our lives, and protect ourselves against those who would attack us. We cannot bring freedom to the entire world at the point of a sword, because when we do, we become evil ourselves.
just hope for the sake of Iran, the will make wize choices about their nuke policy. Them along with N. Korea are next on our list. Make no mistake about it. Oh yes, we should invade more countries that haven't attacked us, and have no intention of attacking us. How does that make us not evil? Do we have the right to attack them because we're better than them? How a
Ask anyone if they value personal freedom, and they will almost always says "yes". That's such an absurdly naive statement. How is "personal freedom" defined? Ask an American how it's defined, and a Iranian how it's defined, and you'll likely get two very different answers. The Iranian would most likely say that personal freedom is the freedom the act according to the principles of Islam. Even many Americans don't value true personal freedom. They'll say you should be free to do what you want, except if it's being gay and getting married, or watching pornography, or other things they don't like. Why do you think Americans make laws against these sorts of things in their communities? Now, if you define "personal freedom" as "American-style freedom", then you'll likely get a lot of negative reactions. Many Chinese would put such freedom at a lower priority than social harmony, and many muslims will put such freedom at a lower priority than a godly society. Remember what it says in the Bible: if you find an unbeliever in a community, you should destroy the community and never allow anyone to live there again. There are a great many people who believe this sort of thing, and for them, the fear of God is a lot more important than personal freedom.
But what you point out about history are situations of human nature of greed and hunger of power. No! The Iranian student revolution (that put the current theocracy into power) had nothing to do with greed or hunger of power. The Puritan communities in the US had nothing to do with greed or hunger for power. Yet, both these societies supported the restriction of personal freedom for the overall goals of the community. Iraq today is a fundemental lesson in this phenomena. Recent polls show that the majority of Iraqi's favor a strongly religious government. Guess what that means? Yep, conservative Islamic law that significantly restricts personal freedom --- to a level that is even more significant than under Saddam. Indeed, the conservative Islamic clerics *hated* Saddam, because his secular society didn't enforce the sort of religious beliefs and behaviors they wanted people to follow. Where is the dictator hungering for power in Iraq now? Nowhere! The *people* want to use their freedom to create a society that enforces restrictions. It's a hard concept for many westerners to accept, but that doesn't change the reality of the situation.
As for the Vietnamesem, I'm sure they just love Kim in power. Huh? Kim Jong Il is in power in North Korea, not Vietnam.
Actually some do think of him as a God, but only out of fear. Right. Only out of fear. That's why Europeans regarded their King as divine less than a thousand years ago. Out of fear. That's pure and unadultered bullshit, stemming from a fundemental inability to understand a people that think nothing like you.
Obviously, America will not stand by and be attacked without reprocution. Of course. America was entirely justified in retaliating against Japan for attacking us. Whether it was then justified in remaking Japan in its own image is debatable. However, my point isn't whether or not that was justified, but rather, that America did indeed remake Japan, it's government anyway, in its own image.
Yes they are. By what logic?
Regardless of his own heinous actions, we was a threat to western world the valued democrocy. Hah! That's a fricking hilarious statement. You think Saddam is the only dictator out there? I got news for you: dictators are everywhere, even in supposedly democratic countries, and many of them are a far bigger threat than Saddam. If you really want to go after the threats, you'll attack Pakistan (military dicatorship with nukes), or China (communist country with nukes), or North Korea (communist military dictatorship with nukes). Saddam had no significant offensive capability, and attacking under the premise of a defensive action was, at best, a dumb allocation of resources. Of course, tha
I agree. Our school (and probably a lot of others) is thing of splitting the CS department and creating a software engineering major. Something like that would remedy the situation.
f that's the case, why are proponents of univeral health use polls to argue that majority of Americans want some sort of universal health care? What proponents are using that? From what I remember of the debates and the convention, they are using the frightening statistics of our healthcare costs and the number of uninsured people we have.
I never said that I was against universal health care. My original comment had nothing to do with universal healthcare vs private healthcare. It was simply pointing out that according to key health indicators, Canada's system is working out better than ours, and they pay less. This remains true regardless of all the personal anecdotes about Canada's healthcare that people keep brigning up.
I'm just against the idea of "Let's just copy Canada's version of universal healthcare because everyone there is happy!". I never suggested anything of the sort.
First, there are plenty of people there who are unhappy with the speed of care and want access to private healthcare. In a free country, you really couldn't stop private healthcare for those want to invest in it.
Second, American has a problem that Canada does not; high cost malpractice suits Statistics don't bear this out. The cost of malpractice insurance in 2002 came out to 0.4% of total healthcare costs for the year. Since the insurance companies are not going bankrupt, it's quite clear that payouts as a result of malpractice suits were even less than 0.4% of total healthcare costs. Malpractice suits are a red-herring in the debate about healthcare.
I don't think it has anything to do with evangelism, that aspect is just propoganda to justify the assault.
To tell the truth, I think you've got a little bit of both. The leadership in this country honestly seems to believe in evangelical democracy. While it's a truely foolish idea*, I do think their intentions are good. On top of that, I think you've got various opportunists who want to take advantage of this foolishness for their personal gain.
*) For anybody who doesn't believe it's a truely foolish idea: go read your history. Democracy has a dismal rate of failure. It can work in certain countries that are ready for it (rich, educated, prosperous), but fails miserably otherwise. Consider: tt took France more than a hundred years to establish a lasting democracy. This is a country that was rich, educated, prosperous, and had an intellectual class that invented many of our ideas of modern democracy. Yet, republic after republic failed in this fertile environment. Democracy is on the precipice of failing in Russia, a country that is relatively westernized already.
The fundemental problem is that the administration see imposed democracy in Iraq as parallel to imposed democracy in Japan or Germany. This is where the foolishness comes from. Iraq is not in it's wildest dreams anything like Japan or Germany. The latter were industrial powerhouses, had an educated populace, and were largely secularized. Japan had actively adopted many western ideas into it's constitution for the four or five decades preceding WWII. Germany had an even more significant history of democratic thinking, and an intellectual elite that embraced the ideas of democracy and socialism. That democracy worked in these countries is not surprising. But Iraq has none of these things. The US can pump all the money it wants into the country, but without the fundemental qualities that make democracy tenable, they are just sowing their seeds in a barren wasteland.
The desire for freedom is the natural goal of the human existence. Your logic is deeply flawed. First, you conflate freedom with democracy. That's a very dangerous thing. Freedom is a *far* more widespread, though still not universal, concept than democracy. Hell, even we don't believe totally in democracy --- that's why our republic has layers of protections (legislators), to prevent the people from making decisions directly.
As for this idea that freedom is a natural drive, it's romantazied rubbish. If it was actually true, we wouldn't be in a situation where after ten thousand years of large-scale civilization, most societies are still not truely free. We wouldn't be in a situation where even countries that have achieved a free society (Russia being the most notable example of many), are becoming less free in order to be more safe. Throughout history, a great many societies (including our ancestors), placed a much higher emphasis on a God-fearing society than a free one. It was and is considered perfectly acceptable to restrict the freedom of people, sometime to great degrees, in order to prevent God from bringing his wrath down on the entire community. It is just foolish to say freedom is a natural drive, when history clearly shows otherwise.
The distinction between freedom and democracy is vitally important because we do not impose freedom on other countries, we impose democracy. Vietnam was all about restricting freedom to impose democracy. The Vietnamese voted in free elections to create a communist society. We wanted to take away their freedom and give them democracy.
Yet, it's clueless minded people like you who go off and spout how "Imperialistic" America is. America is definitely not imperialistic. Our actions are entirely different in character. It is, however, dangerously evangelical.
However, they still have their own cuture and even their own constitution. With regards to Japan's constitution, it was written by 24 Americans (members of MacArthur's staff) in a week. There was significant input from the Japanese government, but the fundemental ideas of the constitution were imposed by MacArthur. The same is largely true of Korea, and now Iraq. There is a fundemental difference here between how our constitution came about, and how theirs came about. Ours was indeed written entirely by a single group of people. However, they were *our* people. They were Americans. Their constitutions were written either by Americans, or by a constitutional convention hand-picked by Americans, with significant influence from Americans. This is precisely why I saw were are evangelical. The idea that we brought freedom to Iraq is pure nonsense. We gave them, through our selection of their constitutional conventon delegates, a single option: democracy. That's freedom within the cage of what we find acceptable.
But hey, I guess you would rather have Saddam in power filling up mass graves and finding other places to hide the bodies in que. Saddam is clearly a bad man. But his evils are not our evils. If we do evil in order to combat evil, that does not make us good.
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It's not a theory. The US is a major trading partner of many countries. The US is a huge consumer of oil. If the US economy is depressed, they can't buy as much stuff from other people, and that hurts business.
Um, maybe because the specs have changed since it was first announced? The thing has dual-300MHz processors. That's clearly close to PS2 quality.
This is theoretically true. This is generally not implemented in C++ compilers, though, because C++'s loose semantics for pointers makes such optimizations very difficult to do.
Well, there are also other benefits. For example, the generic data structures in the kernel are based on the void* model. This is quite a bit less efficient than the template model, which allows a lot better code optimization. That's why STL's sort() is usually 10x faster than C's qsort().
I don't quite see how the second statement follows from the first. The reaction of the people to official policy is a natural part of the politics of a country.
Heh. I think netizens in general are just more liberal. Kerry is winning by 51% in the United States, according to that site!
If you really understand how interconnected the world has become, you wouldn't have that attitude.
The US is an economic powerhouse, one that is tied with trillions of dollars of international trade and debt. What's bad for the US economy is bad for the world economy. If the US debt keeps going up, and the US has problems paying it, a whole lot of foreigners are out of a lot of money. If the US imposes tariffs on trade, it's not just American workers who suffer, but workers in countries that trade with the US suffer.
So from the point of view of a foreigner, it makes perfect sense to keep abreast of American politics. This is something many people due, because it has a direct impact on their lives. Even as an American, I make it a point to keep abreast of politics in Europe and Canada. These regions are important strategic allies, and important partners in trade. In the future, the EU also looks like it will become an important competitor economically. As a result, I would be foolish not to keep informed of their politics, because they have a direct impact on my country's economy.
The thing is, most people already have a PS2 or GC. Will they buy an XBox just to play the same games more smoothly? Unlikely, and I think XBox's sales numbers reflect that.
Well, I'm not much of a gamer, but PC games really don't appeal to me. I like Counterstrike, Starcraft, and Call of Duty, but that's about it. I think my main beef is how bad PC RPGs suck. My computer is certainly fast enough to run most games, it just get's used for compiling instead :)
I'm completely serious. When I was there, people were as nice as could be, even though I was quite obviously American. And those signs on the highway (nice big official ones), were quite definitely real. Among the people I met, I didn't sense any animosity towards Americans in the way I sense animosity towards the French over here.
Har har har, you're so funny! You're the first one to ever do that!
I don't own one of those t-shirts. I can't find anything with a collar that says that :) Sersiouly, though, I was totally surprised by the reaction. While the US was doing the whole "freedom fries" crap, the French had signs up on their highways declaring their friendship with the US.
Or, it could just be that the XBox's gaming library is heavily biased towards American tastes? I'm an American, and I don't find the XBox's gaming library to be very attractive --- I hate PC games.
Um, the Japanese love Americans*. The poor sales of the XBox have nothing to do with the Japanese hating Americans. The biggest problem with with the XBox is two-fold:
:)
1) It was late to the scene, and the PS2 was *very* well established by that time;
2) It's gaming library isn't really what the Japanese like. XBox games are more like PC games and less like console games. It's heavy on sports titles, and light on console style RPGs and platformers.
*) So do people in most other countries, which Americans would realize if they actually traveled abroad. Even in Paris, people couldn't have been nicer as I tried to communicate in my heavily yankee-accented broken French
The problem is that I'm a libertarian-leaning liberal. That means I've got enough values in common with real conservatives that I can sympathize with them for being pained by Bush's mockery of conservatism.
Well, it's not quite so simple. The president, given his stature, has quite a lot of power to push bills through Congress. He can certainly do something like encourage Congress to take up review of particular legislation. This is nothing new --- it's been the case since FDR in the 1930's.
Bush than Kerry (or at least right-wing ideals vs. left-wing ideals)
Don't conflate Bush with right-wing ideals. The only thing Bush shares with the right is social and religious beliefs. He's clearly not a fiscally responsible, he's in favor of interventionist war and nation-building, one of his first actions was to jack up the steel tariff, etc. Just being in favor of tax cuts doesn't make you an actual conservative.
What authority does he have to do that?
It's not like he's going to send troops into Russia without Putin's permission. Russia needs help securing it's nuclear weapons, and it's in the best interests of both Russia and the United States to cooperate in this regard. Remember, the Russians are quite frightened about terrorism too, given the recent events with Chechnya. It's a cooperative venture that's long overdue, and very important.
He talks about how we don't have our allies for the war, when in reality, we do have allies, althoguh we are missing some nations
He's right. We don't have *our* allies. We have some allies, but they're not *our* allies. Our allies are the NATO countries, not semi-dictatorships like Pakistan. Our "alliance" is stupid from a military standpoint alone. Why spend billions of dollars to ally yourselves with countries that cannot field the manpower of a single US state? At *best*, it's a strategic mistake, and at worst it's a misleading PR stunt.
I know I wouldnt be all to happy to help Kerry if I was a US ally and he kept saying I did not exist.
You probably wouldn't be happy to be an ally, like the Prime Minister of Poland, who now thinks Bush mislead us into the war.
Kerry talks about creating laws as president, although in reality this is his job as a senator
Kerry nevers talks about creating laws. I don't know where you got that idea. He *does* talk about pushing through legislation, which is perfectly within his powers as president. The President has a lot of influence to encourage (or discourage) certain legislation in Congress. He also talks a lot about allocation of government spending, which is also in his power, given that the OMB (part of the Whitehouse) drafts the budget.
and he STICKS with the decision that he makes.
Sticking with bad decisions is a sign of weakness, not a sign of strength. The information about Iraq has changed drastically since we went in. Bush thought Iraq had WMD, they didn't. Bush thought they were cooperating with terrorists, they weren't. Iraq, as far as two-bit dictatorships go, was less of an immediate danger to us than any of a number of countries. The only excuse Bush has left is that "we freed the people of Iraq." Well, guess what? That's not our job! The only reason Bush still says he wouldn't have done anything different is because he isn't man enough to admit he was wrong.
"While you may not agree with Bush's decision, but you must agree that he has the ability to make a decision"
Yes, I agree that Bush has the ability to make decisions. Of course, so does everyone else. That's nothing special. It takes a real man to know when to change his mind. To quote Santayana: "a fanatic is one who, having lost sight of his aim, redoubles his effort". The world is complicated --- you get no credit for trying hard!
Well, it depends quite heavily on the application in question. In practice, most applications do not show a huge difference in performance between 512KB caches and 1MB caches. Certainly, it's nothing like the 50%+ performance improvement that you can get from properly written code on dual core CPUs.
When I speak of freedom, I speak of freedom to not be ruled by will and might of others above my own.
Well, you certainly don't live in that sort of society now! Because the will of others tells you that you can't smoke marijuana. The will of others tells you that you can't marry somebody of the same sex. Depending on where you live, the will of others even tells you that you cannot look at pornography. So if that's the definition of freedom you want to use, then I have to say it is something thus far unattained by man.
This is freedom in it's purest for as long as the are in the bounds of the laws formed in a democrocy, NOT by a dictator.
This makes no sense. Restricting freedom is okay, as long as a democracy does it, rather than a dictator? Well, we certainly don't have a democracy in the US (we have a republic!), so where do you draw the line? If a dictator is unacceptable, then is a triumvirate okay? How about a committee. How about a parliament? What's the difference? Again, you are conflating democracy and freedom, and that's leading your logic astray.
And no one votes for an evil dictator.
Define "evil". Was Hitler evil? Well, lot's of people supported him too (he did great things for Germany before he went wacko). Was Cromwell evil? He certainly was a dictator, but many people loved him! Where do you draw the line for "evil"? Was Napoleon evil? He was a military dictator, and he certainly conquered more of his neighbors than Saddam did! Yet, he remains to this day a popular figure in France. Now, consider that recent polls show that 44% of Iraqi's want Saddam back. You probably consider Saddam evil (and rightly so), but lot's of people did indeed support him. Now, if you expand the definition of "dictator" slightly, consider the theocracy in Iran. It has many of the characteristics of a dictatorship, but it was put in place by a revolution of the people! So your logic is wrong --- people do vote for dictatorships, in various forms, and have throughout history.
As for Kim, you do know that you cannot say anything negitive about him right? If you do, both you and your family are jailed and even killed if your so lucky (less painful) though guilt by association.
What's your point? That Kim Jong Il is evil? Well no shit, Sherlock. Sure he's evil. There are evil people like him all over the world. They are a dime a dozen. Is it now our job to rid the world of every single one of them? Do you realize how idealistic and simple you sound?
To bad the UN is a worthless pile of shit do anything about it.
The UN isn't designed to do anything about it. Americans have the most warped view of the UN, as if it's some sort of world police. The UN is a meeting place for nations to discuss issues and make plans. It's not there to make fiats that they enforce by military force. It's not a world government, nor should it be a world government.
Hell, for that matter, I say we take out all the worlds dictators that go against the will of the majority of people in a harmful and melevolent manor.
First, dictatorship is not necesarily contrary to the will of the people. If you can't understand this simple fact, then you're not paying attention. Second, you wanna foot that bill? Because I'm sure as hell not paying for your idealistic little war on evil. It's a fool's errand to think you can end evil --- it's a war you cannot win. As a free society, all we can do is live our lives, and protect ourselves against those who would attack us. We cannot bring freedom to the entire world at the point of a sword, because when we do, we become evil ourselves.
just hope for the sake of Iran, the will make wize choices about their nuke policy. Them along with N. Korea are next on our list. Make no mistake about it.
Oh yes, we should invade more countries that haven't attacked us, and have no intention of attacking us. How does that make us not evil? Do we have the right to attack them because we're better than them? How a
Ask anyone if they value personal freedom, and they will almost always says "yes".
That's such an absurdly naive statement. How is "personal freedom" defined? Ask an American how it's defined, and a Iranian how it's defined, and you'll likely get two very different answers. The Iranian would most likely say that personal freedom is the freedom the act according to the principles of Islam. Even many Americans don't value true personal freedom. They'll say you should be free to do what you want, except if it's being gay and getting married, or watching pornography, or other things they don't like. Why do you think Americans make laws against these sorts of things in their communities? Now, if you define "personal freedom" as "American-style freedom", then you'll likely get a lot of negative reactions. Many Chinese would put such freedom at a lower priority than social harmony, and many muslims will put such freedom at a lower priority than a godly society. Remember what it says in the Bible: if you find an unbeliever in a community, you should destroy the community and never allow anyone to live there again. There are a great many people who believe this sort of thing, and for them, the fear of God is a lot more important than personal freedom.
But what you point out about history are situations of human nature of greed and hunger of power.
No! The Iranian student revolution (that put the current theocracy into power) had nothing to do with greed or hunger of power. The Puritan communities in the US had nothing to do with greed or hunger for power. Yet, both these societies supported the restriction of personal freedom for the overall goals of the community. Iraq today is a fundemental lesson in this phenomena. Recent polls show that the majority of Iraqi's favor a strongly religious government. Guess what that means? Yep, conservative Islamic law that significantly restricts personal freedom --- to a level that is even more significant than under Saddam. Indeed, the conservative Islamic clerics *hated* Saddam, because his secular society didn't enforce the sort of religious beliefs and behaviors they wanted people to follow. Where is the dictator hungering for power in Iraq now? Nowhere! The *people* want to use their freedom to create a society that enforces restrictions. It's a hard concept for many westerners to accept, but that doesn't change the reality of the situation.
As for the Vietnamesem, I'm sure they just love Kim in power.
Huh? Kim Jong Il is in power in North Korea, not Vietnam.
Actually some do think of him as a God, but only out of fear.
Right. Only out of fear. That's why Europeans regarded their King as divine less than a thousand years ago. Out of fear. That's pure and unadultered bullshit, stemming from a fundemental inability to understand a people that think nothing like you.
Obviously, America will not stand by and be attacked without reprocution.
Of course. America was entirely justified in retaliating against Japan for attacking us. Whether it was then justified in remaking Japan in its own image is debatable. However, my point isn't whether or not that was justified, but rather, that America did indeed remake Japan, it's government anyway, in its own image.
Yes they are.
By what logic?
Regardless of his own heinous actions, we was a threat to western world the valued democrocy.
Hah! That's a fricking hilarious statement. You think Saddam is the only dictator out there? I got news for you: dictators are everywhere, even in supposedly democratic countries, and many of them are a far bigger threat than Saddam. If you really want to go after the threats, you'll attack Pakistan (military dicatorship with nukes), or China (communist country with nukes), or North Korea (communist military dictatorship with nukes). Saddam had no significant offensive capability, and attacking under the premise of a defensive action was, at best, a dumb allocation of resources. Of course, tha
I agree. Our school (and probably a lot of others) is thing of splitting the CS department and creating a software engineering major. Something like that would remedy the situation.
f that's the case, why are proponents of univeral health use polls to argue that majority of Americans want some sort of universal health care?
What proponents are using that? From what I remember of the debates and the convention, they are using the frightening statistics of our healthcare costs and the number of uninsured people we have.
I never said that I was against universal health care.
My original comment had nothing to do with universal healthcare vs private healthcare. It was simply pointing out that according to key health indicators, Canada's system is working out better than ours, and they pay less. This remains true regardless of all the personal anecdotes about Canada's healthcare that people keep brigning up.
I'm just against the idea of "Let's just copy Canada's version of universal healthcare because everyone there is happy!".
I never suggested anything of the sort.
First, there are plenty of people there who are unhappy with the speed of care and want access to private healthcare.
In a free country, you really couldn't stop private healthcare for those want to invest in it.
Second, American has a problem that Canada does not; high cost malpractice suits
Statistics don't bear this out. The cost of malpractice insurance in 2002 came out to 0.4% of total healthcare costs for the year. Since the insurance companies are not going bankrupt, it's quite clear that payouts as a result of malpractice suits were even less than 0.4% of total healthcare costs. Malpractice suits are a red-herring in the debate about healthcare.
I don't think it has anything to do with evangelism, that aspect is just propoganda to justify the assault.
To tell the truth, I think you've got a little bit of both. The leadership in this country honestly seems to believe in evangelical democracy. While it's a truely foolish idea*, I do think their intentions are good. On top of that, I think you've got various opportunists who want to take advantage of this foolishness for their personal gain.
*) For anybody who doesn't believe it's a truely foolish idea: go read your history. Democracy has a dismal rate of failure. It can work in certain countries that are ready for it (rich, educated, prosperous), but fails miserably otherwise. Consider: tt took France more than a hundred years to establish a lasting democracy. This is a country that was rich, educated, prosperous, and had an intellectual class that invented many of our ideas of modern democracy. Yet, republic after republic failed in this fertile environment. Democracy is on the precipice of failing in Russia, a country that is relatively westernized already.
The fundemental problem is that the administration see imposed democracy in Iraq as parallel to imposed democracy in Japan or Germany. This is where the foolishness comes from. Iraq is not in it's wildest dreams anything like Japan or Germany. The latter were industrial powerhouses, had an educated populace, and were largely secularized. Japan had actively adopted many western ideas into it's constitution for the four or five decades preceding WWII. Germany had an even more significant history of democratic thinking, and an intellectual elite that embraced the ideas of democracy and socialism. That democracy worked in these countries is not surprising. But Iraq has none of these things. The US can pump all the money it wants into the country, but without the fundemental qualities that make democracy tenable, they are just sowing their seeds in a barren wasteland.
The desire for freedom is the natural goal of the human existence.
Your logic is deeply flawed. First, you conflate freedom with democracy. That's a very dangerous thing. Freedom is a *far* more widespread, though still not universal, concept than democracy. Hell, even we don't believe totally in democracy --- that's why our republic has layers of protections (legislators), to prevent the people from making decisions directly.
As for this idea that freedom is a natural drive, it's romantazied rubbish. If it was actually true, we wouldn't be in a situation where after ten thousand years of large-scale civilization, most societies are still not truely free. We wouldn't be in a situation where even countries that have achieved a free society (Russia being the most notable example of many), are becoming less free in order to be more safe. Throughout history, a great many societies (including our ancestors), placed a much higher emphasis on a God-fearing society than a free one. It was and is considered perfectly acceptable to restrict the freedom of people, sometime to great degrees, in order to prevent God from bringing his wrath down on the entire community. It is just foolish to say freedom is a natural drive, when history clearly shows otherwise.
The distinction between freedom and democracy is vitally important because we do not impose freedom on other countries, we impose democracy. Vietnam was all about restricting freedom to impose democracy. The Vietnamese voted in free elections to create a communist society. We wanted to take away their freedom and give them democracy.
Yet, it's clueless minded people like you who go off and spout how "Imperialistic" America is.
America is definitely not imperialistic. Our actions are entirely different in character. It is, however, dangerously evangelical.
However, they still have their own cuture and even their own constitution.
With regards to Japan's constitution, it was written by 24 Americans (members of MacArthur's staff) in a week. There was significant input from the Japanese government, but the fundemental ideas of the constitution were imposed by MacArthur. The same is largely true of Korea, and now Iraq. There is a fundemental difference here between how our constitution came about, and how theirs came about. Ours was indeed written entirely by a single group of people. However, they were *our* people. They were Americans. Their constitutions were written either by Americans, or by a constitutional convention hand-picked by Americans, with significant influence from Americans. This is precisely why I saw were are evangelical. The idea that we brought freedom to Iraq is pure nonsense. We gave them, through our selection of their constitutional conventon delegates, a single option: democracy. That's freedom within the cage of what we find acceptable.
But hey, I guess you would rather have Saddam in power filling up mass graves and finding other places to hide the bodies in que.
Saddam is clearly a bad man. But his evils are not our evils. If we do evil in order to combat evil, that does not make us good.